“Even before the official opening of the BRICS Games, it was predicted that the diving tournament would be the most popular: tickets for it were the first to disappear from official sales and the most popular among resellers.
However, from a sporting point of view, several aspects of the current tournament have been a failure.
First of all, it concerns representation. The campaign to invite participating countries began a year ago. It would seem that this is enough to obtain the consent of at least the states that have come to Russia for the Cup of Eurasian Countries over the past three years.
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But something didn’t go as planned. Iranian athletes refused to start due to national mourning over the death of the country’s president, Serbia focused on the “home” European Championship in Belgrade.
Contact with the Chinese side could not be established despite the fact that in April Russian jumpers held a training camp in this country – it was organized privately, bypassing state sports structures.
Cuba also did not respond to the invitation, although the divers of this country provided the Eurasian Cup with a quite decent level of competition.
The overall picture was brightened up by the invitation of the Belarusian national team to Kazan, but the organizers still failed to ensure a worthy representation in the final.
In mixed doubles, there were only three pairs of participants on springboard; In the women’s platform, only two athletes (and both Russians) competed for the main prize.
And in the mixed doubles event, the only duet of Yulia Timoshinina and Ruslan Ternovoy was entered on this apparatus, and their joint performance on Monday did not have any sports component – it essentially became a demonstration of visiting stars for a good sum. .
The differences between the Russians and their foreign rivals were also very telling. On Monday, Elizaveta Kuzina snatched victory on the three-meter springboard from Kristina Ilyinykh only on the last attempt, but both were separated from third place by a chasm of more than 80 points.
Alexander Bondar was the first on the platform, beating Nikita Schleicher, but the difference between him and the Venezuelan Jesus Gonzalez exceeded 100. Schleicher, in turn, won the springboard final the day before, moving away from the Venezuelan already mentioned by 95.6.
This delicate situation could probably have been avoided if the organizing committee had allowed a number of Russian athletes to compete outside of the competition, as was done in artistic gymnastics.
Or, it gave the host country the opportunity to field not only an adult team, but also a junior team at the Games. Additionally, the BRICS Games regulations initially allowed such an option.
According to the head coach of the national team, Svetlana Moiseeva, she also made a similar request to the President of the Russian Diving Federation Stanislav Druzhinin, but the head considered it too costly, ”RT in Russian quotes Vaitsekhovskaya .
Source: Sport
I’m Todderic Kirkman, a journalist and author for athletistic. I specialize in covering all news related to sports, ranging from basketball to football and everything in between. With over 10 years of experience in the industry, I have become an invaluable asset to my team. My ambition is to bring the most up-to-date information on sports topics around the world.
